January is nearing its end, which means it’s prediction time..
Everybody will be getting in the act. Preseason magazines (the few that remain), sports websites, columnists, bloggers. We’ll soon be swamped with forecasts for Major League Baseball’s 2024 season.
And, yes, I’ll be contributing to the flood, as always. The next six weeks will feature division-by-division rundowns. Each Tuesday will review the best (and worst) performances within a specified division in 2023, and the following Friday will offer my 2024 forecast for the same clubs.
Here’s the schedule:
January 30, February 2: American League East
February 6, 9: American League Central
February 13, 16: American League West
February 20, 23: National League East
February 27, March 1: National League Central
March 5, 8: National League West
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I’ll be using the same prediction system that I’ve employed since 2021. It’s based on a computer program that matches each team’s record during the past three seasons (in this case, 2021-2023) against the corresponding marks for every club that played during the era of free agency, which began in 1976.
The idea is to find parallels from the past that might offer hints about the future.
You might wonder if such a system can account for the massive offseason changes occasionally wrought by free agency, such as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ spending orgy this winter.
Well, my program has been tailored with such an eventuality in mind. The collection of comparison clubs is confined to the years since free agency was instituted, a span when such upheavals have become common.
And don’t forget that expensive acquisitions often have surprisingly little impact on the bottom line. You have seen what’s happened to the Yankees lately, haven’t you?
Relying on history may not be a perfect system — I’ve made my share of forecasting errors the past three years — but it works surprisingly well much of the time.
Let’s dust off the crystal ball next week.